Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- South Korea said it plans an
artillery drill on Yeonpyeong, the island struck by shelling
from its communist neighbor last month after live-fire practice.

The drill will take place sometime between Dec. 18 and Dec.
21 and about 20 U.S. military personnel will help, South Korea’s
Joint Chiefs of Staff said in an e-mailed statement today.

North Korea has said the South’s Nov. 23 exercise, which it
responded to with a barrage that killed four people, was a
“reckless military provocation.” The state-run Korean Central
News Agency on Dec. 5 warned of “catastrophic consequences” to
South Korean plans for live-firing drills.

U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said
North Korea has no reason to see them as provocative. “These
are routine exercises,” Crowley said. “There’s nothing
provocative or unusual or threatening about these exercises. The
North Koreans have been notified about what South Korea plans to
do.”

Crowley said the planned drill “is a perfectly legitimate
step” by South Korea.

“It won’t be easy for North Korea to make the same strong,
provocative reaction as the last time,” said Kim Yong Hyun, a
professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in
Seoul. “China is pressuring North Korea, and if there’s a
second provocation, it’ll make it make it harder for them to
start dialogue with the U.S. and the international community.”

‘Private Visit’

Bill Richardson, the Democratic governor of New Mexico and
a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, arrived in
Pyongyang today, according to a one-sentence dispatch from KCNA.
Richardson’s trip is “a private visit,” Crowley said on Dec.
8, adding that the governor wasn’t “carrying any particular
message from the United States government.”

In a separate statement today, KCNA said North Korea is
open to all proposals for denuclearization talks but won’t
“beg” for dialogue.

North Korea’s uranium enrichment and construction of a
light-water reactor are for peaceful purposes, KCNA cited a
spokesman for the country’s foreign ministry as saying.

North Korea’s firing on the Yeonpyeong fishing community
and military outpost last month was the first shelling of South
Korean soil since the 1950-1953 war. The North doesn’t recognize
the western sea border demarcated by the United Nations after
the war and demands it should be drawn further south to include
Yeonpyeong and four neighboring islands in North Korean waters.

“The military clash on the island was sparked off entirely
due to the reckless military provocation on the part of the U.S.
and the South Korean puppet forces,” KCNA said today.

South Korea’s defense minister, Kim Kwan Jin, has vowed
retaliation that would include air strikes in response to a new
North Korean attack.

Dongguk University’s Kim said North Korea was likely to
respond to South Korea’s artillery drills this time with
“verbal bombs” or possibly its own live-fire exercises around
the western sea border.